What if there were no perps to be walked this morning because
none were arrested the night before?

What if that minority single mother living in the projects
with her two young kids caught them playing with matches
before they
started that fatal fire?

What if that madman just put a single bullet into his demented
brain instead of slaughtering 33 innocent Virginia Tech students?

What if a local politician called a press conference and
the press didn't attend because it wasn't newsworthy?

What if that rock star called his Narcotics Anonymous sponsor
and went to a meeting instead of snorting that last overdose
of coke?

What if that fundamentalist Middle Eastern radical decided
that today wasn't the day to be bombing a school bus filled
with children
of another ethnicity?

What if the opposing factions in Iraq went
to their respective mosques to pray for peace instead
of detonating themselves in their midst?

What if the guy who was just flipped the bird because he
honked his horn at another driver on the Freeway, just
shook his head
and kept driving instead of chasing the offender down and
pumping his car with automatic weapons fire, severing the
spinal cord
of the innocent 12 year old passenger in the back seat,
rendering her a cripple for the rest of her life?

What if there was no drought anywhere in the world; no
tornadoes; no earthquakes, mud slides, forest fires?

What if there was nothing newsworthy to put on Page One
of your newspaper tomorrow.

What if your News Editor had to move that photo that you
took of Jackie Jones and her 4-H Club award winning 12
pound tomato
to
Page One because there was simply nothing else with which
to lead the paper?

Now, what would they run on the cover of the Feature Section/Home
Section/Regional Section/Second Front?